by Jenn Vakey
The second person they spoke with was Ned Lipsey. He had dated Nicole for a short time in high school, before he was ready to come out of the closet. He told them that when he did, Nicole stood by him and supported him when a lot of people had not. Since then, they had been very close. He said she had never been as happy as she was when she and Justin got together, and she had not been the same since he passed. “Something inside of her seemed to have broken,” he told them sadly. He said that other than the cabin where Justin used to take her, he could not think of any place where she would go. He did tell them, however, that she had been seeing a therapist and trying to keep it secret, even from him. While he was shocked when they told him why they were looking for Nicole, he seemed to see the truth in it by the end, and said if he heard from her at all that he would call them immediately.
The final person on their list was Joey Fisher. He claimed to not know Nicole at all. It wasn’t until Rilynne showed him a picture of her that he seemed to even recognize her. According to him, he had met Nicole once at a bar but didn’t know how she had gotten his number or address. Following a hunch, Rilynne asked him if he had been involved in any police investigations. He had indeed been the victim of a mugging just two months before.
“We didn’t find out where she could be hiding out,” Matthews told Detective Wilcome. “We did find one of her potential victims, though.” They had made it very clear to Mr. Fisher that he should call the police immediately if he saw Nicole, and under no circumstances should he go anywhere with her.
“Her friend, Ned Lipsey, did tell us she has secretly been seeing a therapist, but he could not give us a name,” Rilynne said. “I will see if her financial statements can give us an idea of who she has been seeing, and get a warrant for her records.”
“Good,” Detective Wilcome said. “We were not able to get anywhere from tracking her car, and her cell phone appears to be turned off at the moment. The provider is prepared to run a trace as soon as it’s turned on, though.”
Rilynne sat down and ran her fingers through her hair. “How did we not suspect the killer was a woman?” she asked. In fact, she had been asking herself that very question all morning. Looking back at it now, it seemed so obvious. “All she would have had to do was ask the men for a little help, and they would have gone right with her.”
“Female serial killers are almost unheard of. Besides, we had assumed the victims were being taken by force, and none of them were exactly small,” Detective Wilcome said, trying to justify it to himself just as much as Rilynne.
“Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Rilynne heard from the doorway behind her. She turned to see District Attorney Greene looking quite perturbed.
“Please have a seat, Madam District Attorney,” Wilcome said, pulling out a chair.
She hadn’t even fully lowered in the chair before she started again. “So, let me get this straight. The suspect we have been looking into is actually not the perpetrator, but is instead being held by the perpetrator, who happens to be another member of your department. Did I leave anything out?” The tone of her voice said that she was just as frustrated as they were. “What is her connection with Justin Davis?”
“They apparently were dating for about a year and a half before his death, and were even talking about getting married,” Detective Wilcome said. “Detective LaShad went back to the hospital to interview Derek Hartley about his time with her, and he stated Nicole was calling him Justin, and talking about how they would soon be together again, permanently.”
“Then how did the sample from the tires and fibers from Ben Davis’s car match the ones collected? Is he in on it, too?” she asked abruptly.
“Ben said that Nicole had been borrowing his car. All she would have to do is take it out to the cabin to collect soil in the tires, and collect a few carpet fibers to plant and she would have the perfect fall guy. If we got close enough to suspect the case was related to Justin Davis, the investigation would follow Ben instead of Nicole.”
“How did the blood tests on the bedpan not show that it was a female we were looking for?” she asked.
“It would appear that Nicole tampered with the report, changing the sex to male. We still have the original sample, which she did not have any contact with,” Wilcome explained. “I’m having the sample rerun against a sample the DNA we pulled off of Nicole’s toothbrush.”
The district attorney nodded, rubbing her temple gently. “Where are we on finding her?” she asked.
“We learned that she has been seeing a therapist,” Rilynne said. “If anyone knows where she’s likely to go, they will. We are working on trying to track down a name right now.”
“Good,” she said as she stood up. “Let me know as soon as you have a name and I will get the warrant pushed through.”
* * *
“I think I may have something,” Steele said, motioning Rilynne and Matthews over. “It wasn’t easy, she covered her tracks very well.” He handed them a three-page bank statement.
“What am I looking at?” Matthews said flipping through the pages. “These are in Justin Davis’s name. How does this help us?”
Steele pointed up at the top of the page. “These are dated two months ago. It would appear Nicole began using Justin’s credit card after he passed. This one-“ he pointed at a charge on the second page, “-is a therapist downtown.”
“Great. Did you find out if Nicole is a patient there?” Rilynne asked excitedly.
“Here is where it gets a little funny,” Steele said. “They don’t have a patient listed by that name.” Rilynne let out a low sign of disappointment. “But, I played on a hunch and sent them a picture of her, and they confirmed she is a patient there. She has been using the name Marie Davis.”
Rilynne dropped the statements down on the desk. “Great work. Call and have the warrant sent over. Matthews and I will head over there now and see if we can get anywhere while we wait.”
Rilynne had never seen Matthews move through traffic so quickly. Where it should have taken them nearly twenty minutes to reach the office building, they were walking through the front door in under ten.
“We need to speak with Dr. Gamboa,” Rilynne said, holding her badge up to the receptionist.
“He is just finishing up with a patient. If you would like to have a seat, he will be out shortly,” she motioned to the chairs behind them.
Rilynne’s eyes found the clock on the wall, just before two.
“What do you think the chances are that she would have told him about the place she’s hiding Ben?” Rilynne asked Matthews.
He shrugged and answered, “It all depends on how strong her belief was that we would never be able to track her here. Hopefully she thought we would not be smart enough to check Justin’s financial statements after his death.”
As she was about to respond, the door to the office opened. Matthews and Rilynne both stood up to greet the doctor as he walked out.
“Dr. Gamboa, I’m Detective Evans, this is Detective Matthews, we need to talk to you about a patient you have been seeing,” she said, flashing him her badge. “I believe she has been going by the name Marie Davis.”
He did not look like he could be a day over twenty, but Rilynne knew he must be. His shaggy dark hair hung haphazardly across his forehead, ending just above his warm, insightful eyes. “Please come in,” he said. “What is it that I can help you with?”
“This woman has been coming to see you under the name of Marie Davis. Is that correct?” Detective Matthews slid the photograph across the desk.
Dr. Gamboa picked up the photo and nodded. “Yes, I have been seeing her for about a year,” he responded.
“We need to know everything you can tell us about her,” Rilynne said.
He looked from Rilynne to Detective Matthews, then leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I’m afraid I can not divulge any information about Mrs. Davis,” he said firmly. “Doctor-patient confidentiality protects what is di
scussed in our sessions.”
“This woman-” Rilynne stabbed her finger at the photograph still laying on the desk, “-is named Nicole Benson. She has brutally murdered eight men over the last year, and currently is holding another one, a member of our police force, hostage. You may have heard her referred to on the news as the Pirate Killer,” she said abruptly. “Now, we need to know what she has discussed with you, so we can find her before it’s too late. We have a warrant already on the way for her records, but surely the circumstances surpass the obligation of doctor-patient confidentiality.”
He let out a low moan of contemplation, before turning towards the cabinet behind him and retrieving a large file. “Are you positive she’s the Pirate Killer?” When both Matthews and Rilynne remained silent, he closed his eyes and mumbled something under his breath. “Marie, err-Nicole, started coming to me after her husband passed. She was having a difficult time dealing with the loss. Have you spoken with her brother-in-law? She always spoke very highly of him, and said he was the only family that she had left.”
“If you are referring to Ben Davis, she kidnapped him yesterday morning,” Rilynne said almost resentfully. “It would appear that she has actually been setting him up as a fall guy in case we started getting close to identifying her. Is there any place she talked about, somewhere that would hold great significance for her that she might go to if she felt cornered?”
“Well, let’s see,” he said flipping through the pages. “She did speak often of a cabin that her husband would take her to.”
“The cabin was burned down by her several days ago. We need to know if there was any other place she and Justin Davis would visit,” Matthews said.
He continued thumbing through the pages, but quickly shook his head. “That was the only place she ever talked about.”
Rilynne leaned forward. “We need to know about her mental state,” she explained. “Justin Davis had been dating Nicole for about a year and a half prior to his death, and although it looks as through he was considering proposing, they were not married. No one at the station, where she has been employed for the last five years, even knew they were dating. Now since you appear to be the only person she has been confiding in, we need your help to understand what is going on in her head. If we can do that, it might help us find Ben Davis before he becomes her next victim.”
“Marie, I’m sorry-Nicole, was extremely depressed when she first started coming in for sessions. Although she tried to hide it, I could see a lot of anger hidden just under the surface. She said that she feared allowing herself to grieve could cost her position at work, so she had been internalizing it. I impressed upon her the importance of finding a way to deal with her grief instead of pushing it aside. I suggested she take up a hobby, or an activity that allowed her to express her emotions in a healthy way. I had suggested writing, or perhaps creating a scrapbook to preserve her memories.”
Detective Matthews laid out several photographs on the desk. “We found this hidden in a secret cubby at the back of her closet,” he pointed to the pictures of the shrine.
Dr. Gamboa didn’t seem to know what to say.
Rilynne continued, “Did you notice any change in her behaviors or mood?”
“Actually yes,” he answered. “About a month into our sessions, she started to appear a little happier. In fact, on…” he looked through his notes, “… August twentieth, she seemed positively happy. She said she had found a way of keeping Justin alive.”
“That is the day after she took the first victim,” Rilynne said to Matthews. She looked back at Dr. Gamboa, who was beginning to look a little sick. “How was her emotional state after that point?”
“Well, by the next session a week later, she had sunk back into the depressed state she was in when she first sought help. After that, her mood became lighter. She did say once that ‘Justin would never truly be gone’. I had taken that to mean she had found a place in her heart where he would always be, but given this new information…” He let himself trail off. “I should have seen this. She never showed any sign of being capable of harming anyone, though. And even if she had, of all people, Ben Davis would have been the last on the list. She always spoke of him very lovingly.”
“So she has been trying to keep Justin alive through surrogates. Everything has been the same from victim to victim, to the last detail,” Rilynne said. “What will happen now that her routine has been forced to change?”
Dr. Gamboa took another long breath. “One of two things will happen,” he explained. “Either she will break down and panic, along with a sense of self preservation will take over, more than likely causing her to flee, or she will sink deeper into a delusional state. If that happens, she will do anything to keep her fantasy going, eliminating anything that endangers it. This will make her extremely dangerous.”
“Thank you, Dr. Gamboa,” Matthews said, rising from his chair. “If there is anything else you can think of, or if you hear from her at all, please call us immediately.”
When they walked out of his office, Rilynne couldn’t help but notice how shaken Dr. Gamboa was. She understood why; it was a major blow to realize something so substantial had slipped right past you.
“What do you think?” Matthews asked her as she slid into the car.
“I think if she intends to flee, Ben will only hold her back. She would have gotten rid of him as soon as she realized we could be onto her. If Dr. Gamboa was right, and she does care as much about Ben as she had led him to believe, there is a chance she could just let him go,” she said.
When the car came to a stop below a red light, he turned to face Rilynne. “Be honest, what do you think the chances of that are?”
Rilynne thought about it for a moment before answering. “If she was going to release him, she would have done it by now,” she said solemnly. “The only chance Ben has is if she’s truly in a delusional state, and he plays along. Either way, we have to find him soon.”
“You know Nicole,” he said. “And you are a good profiler. So, let’s run through it. There has to be something that can help us find them.”
Rilynne looked over at Matthews with a sense of admiration. A lot of officers, even some of the detectives she worked with, did not respect the field of profiling, saying it was no more than guessing.
“Well, Nicole was not only taking the men and shaping them into images of Justin Davis, she was using them to keep him alive for her on an emotional level. She called Derek Hartley Justin, which says she actually believed the victims had become Justin. This would show that she was sinking into a deeper delusional state,” she stated.
“Then why kill them?” he asked. “If it was her way of having Justin Davis back, why would she kill and dismember them. Wouldn’t that just mean losing him again?”
It was a valid question, which Rilynne simply could not answer confidently.
“It would have had something to do with the first victim,” she thought aloud. “She did not intend for him to die. He had an allergic reaction, which would have shattered what ever fantasy she hade built around him. Something about that moment shaped how she saw the men after that.” She tried, but could not think of a valid hypothesis of what satisfaction the killing aspect could provide.
“A part of her still remained tethered to reality, however,” she continued. “She was always meticulous about cleaning the scenes, and was able to successfully keep herself hidden from the investigation. She also managed to hide her emotional state from everyone, including her therapist. If she was truly, completely invested in her delusion, it would have been too hard and something would have slipped. This says that on some level, she’s aware of the truth about the situation. If she continues to teeter between realities, it will make her incredibly unstable. Dr. Gamboa was right, if someone pushes her to believe her fantasy is not real, it could be catastrophic.”
They had just pulled in front of the station as she finished her thought. “Hopefully they found something going through Nicole’s
belongings,” she said, stepping into the elevator.
When they walked into the room, she could tell they had not made much progress. There was a large map tacked to the back wall that had close to fifty pins stuck on it. “What is this?” she asked Detective Steele, who was adding another one.
“These are the locations we have managed to identify on the photographs, and the ones that were visited by both Justin and Nicole,” he explained. “The blue ones seem to be visited only once, and the red ones were frequently stopped at.”
She looked over the locations that had been marked. Most of them were restaurants or stores. They were not locations Nicole would be able to successfully hide someone. There were a few gas stations listed, which could give them a general area to look at, but it still did not give them a viable location to start searching.
“Have we gotten anything from the rest of the people in the address book?” She pulled up the chair next to Detective Wilcome, who was sitting alone in the corner.
He shook his head.
“She has had him for thirty-three hours now, and we are still no closer to finding them. If we don’t find out where she’s keeping him soon, we are not going to find him alive.” Rilynne could feel herself starting to panic, so she took a long deep breath. “I have to clear my head.” She stood up and walked back to her desk.
Holding the picture of Ben and Nicole, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Come on, come on, she repeated to herself.
In front of her was the street just outside. The sky was cloudless, with the sun shining bright above her. She looked from side to side, but saw no one around. She took a step forward and was in front of the hardware store. The antique clock hanging just below the sign read a minute before four-thirty. Looking down, she saw a shadow that did not belong to her. Before she could react, her head felt like it had been split in two. Suddenly she was looking at herself, not through her own eyes, but from someone else’s. She was dragging her limp body into the alley just beyond the storefront, and into a waiting car.
Her breath came quickly as her eyes flew open. She looked down at her watch; she had fifteen minutes. The panic she was feeling was pushed aside by a sense of urgency. She thought for a second about what to do, then grabbed her water off her desk and poured it down the front of her top.
